May 10, 2015

Not just any day, certainly not every day, but every once in a while you realize that among the many lessons that growing up teaches you, the most pressing is the irrevokability of life decisions. When you're younger (or just young-at-heart), jumping off cliffs seems like the thing to do. Everything feels like it's relatively simple. All you have to do is close your eyes, take that jump and let the future take care of itself. Because, frankly, you've never come across a situation that you can't walk away from. And with change being the only constant that you have known, it never occurs to you that a day will come when you wake up with a realization that 'this-is-my-life'. And whether you like it or not, everything in it is something you have to live with. Gone are the days when you could just pick up your (inconveniently-green) passport, have a visa stamped (or not, depending on where you decide to go) and catch a plane to-some-other-place. Gone are the moments when escape from your life had no consequences whatsoever - because, let's face it, who were you leaving behind? Gone are the days when your decisions had no impact (or none that you cared about at any rate) on anyone but you.

Gone are the days when you lived for no one but you.

And if you're honest with yourself, this is what you always wanted. Someone to belong to. Someone who belongs to you.

It's just days - like today - when you wake up to the spine-chilling awareness that whether you like it or not, there's nothing you can do about it. Contrary to past life events there's no 'k-thanks-bye' that you can say while you happily wallow in self-created life dramas and then move on to the next chapter. Truth is after talking about it for most of your life, you've gone and done it. You've jumped off that cliff.

Is it really up to you? Sometimes things and people are just beyond your control. You can't fly if you are being weighed down, regardless of how much you flap your wings. Just as the heat of the sun melted the wax of Icarus' wings, sometimes you just try to fly close to the wrong thing and it ends up making you fall from the sky.

It's how I feel after having a baby. While I love him to bits, and I care for him with all my life, I know that compassion and sense of responsibility will never ever allow me to just pack up and go anywhere anymore. It's a scary feeling and I knew this is how having a baby would make me feel, but I jumped the cliff anyway.

Followers

About Xeb

"Hmm. How to describe a Xainab K. The fact that she prefers an X to a Z should say something: this girl is unconventionality personified. Xeb is the most in-your-face person I've ever met, and she pulls it off with the most amazing balance of brains, beauty and sass that after she leaves, you stand and blink a little before moving on- and don't think that she's particularly bitchy or evil. That's not part of her dictionary (unless you piss her off, of course, and then I'd imagine getting caught in a swarm of locusts a better fate). Neither is thinking twice, 'I don't know' or 'I can't do it'. Xeb is supergirl. When she speaks Gujrati she sounds like an angel. She would thumb her nose at the world and sail away in a sieve at any given time ('pah! who says you can't do it? of course you can!') and not only be automatic captain of the pea-green sails and boss everyone around, but also be bailing water and singing mad sailor songs too....and then dare everyone to skinny-dip in the sea. She's like that. Glass and metal, water and sand, wood and wind. She'll yell at you for trying to talk down to her, and then make you carry her books. And you will, because she's Xeb. Fiercely loving, completely self-assured and unapologetically confident, elle est la look- and how! It's such a unique joy knowing you Xainab, you're an adventure every day. Here's to so many more years of writing a birthday note for you, beautiful Jumblie :)"